


Elaborated

by tjstar



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 1x04 but klaus deals with this shit on his own, Blood and Injury, Drug Addiction, Gen, Ghosts, Good Brother Ben Hargreeves, Hurt/Comfort, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, No Incest, Sibling Bonding, Sober Klaus Hargreeves, Torture, Withdrawal, which means eudora stays alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 04:29:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18731626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjstar/pseuds/tjstar
Summary: “I told you already, he’s not coming. No one will.”





	Elaborated

“You guys are scarier without the masks.”

These are Klaus’ first words as the duct tape gets ripped off his mouth along with the flakey skin on his busted lips, the stubble on his chin sticks to the gag.  

They have stopped playing hide-and-seek a while ago; this is a code red for a junkie who’s got nothing to lose — his kidnappers are not even concealing their personalities anymore. But that pink dog and a blue bear will be haunting him in his nightmares from now on. This dimly lit motel room might be holding ominous secrets. Klaus has heard his captors’ aliases as well, the spirits of their victims were so, so passionate throwing a party in his head. Hazel and Cha-Cha are qualified killers who might have paved the road to their houses with human bones. What a good time to ask for a pen to write a testament, Klaus thinks; but his wrists are taped to the chair so he wouldn’t have succeeded anyway. In general.

All of them are disappointed: these sedulous agents, the ghosts gathering around Klaus like scouts around the bonfire, even Ben. The air-conditioning is turned on, cold streams blow over Klaus’ freezing frame even though his insides are burning from thirst, hunger and mostly from cravings. They emptied the entire stash of his drugs, smashed his pills and even ate that cannabis chocolate so Klaus’ imaginary swimming ring has left him drowning in the ocean of a withdrawal. His throat is still parched, he’d sell his soul for a half-empty glass of water on the table.

“Is your brother here now?”

Cha-Cha’s question is a puzzle he can’t collect; the smack of her hand against his temple destroyed some of his brain cells apparently.

“You’re gonna have to be a little more specific on that,” his voice is all raspy after choking. Ben is lounging on the bed; he winks at Klaus which makes him cackle.

Cha-Cha doesn’t appreciate it.

She slaps him again, copper flavor coats the back of his tongue as his head lolls to his shoulder. There’s a bloody crust on his chest, collarbones turned purple. He’s shared everything he knew  — about the fake eye, about the lab, about the Apocalypse — so the next stop is death, and death only. At best. Ben is weirdly detached from reality, getting more and more transparent. Maybe their bound depends on Klaus’ condition, he’s about to pass out which would have made him even more vulnerable for his tormentors. He laughs again, getting flashbacks about the wire wrapped around his neck; he _tried_ to will himself to like it since he didn’t have any other choice. He even told Cha-Cha that was his kind of stuff — luckily, neither she nor her partner checked that, digesting his bluffing. That gave Klaus’ wrecked self a few minutes of rest.

Hazel keeps eating cookies, there’s a million of crumbs in his beard.

“What about letting me go home already?” Klaus hisses as another swat burns his cheekbone. “Huh, ‘kay I think this is a _no.”_

He hasn’t been helpful over the course of past twelve hours, but the agents’ suits reek of singed plastic and wood.

“We need to talk. Bathroom,” Cha-Cha orders. “Now.”

Hazel follows her like a carnival bear.

Unsettling things happen when they turn the lights off. This is equal to getting locked in the wardrobe again; Klaus had almost dislocated his shoulder attempting to break those seemingly fragile doors, but after hours of torturing he couldn’t cooperate with his own body. Or maybe his captors used another chair to stop the doors from opening. He whimpered as loudly as he could when the cleaning lady came in, but it was muffled by the duct tape, and her vacuum cleaner was roaring like a rocket engine so she must’ve thought those were moans of pleasure coming from the neighboring room. Klaus could’ve sworn she blushed instead of thinking about possible danger while he was struggling with his claustrophobia.

“Klaus… Klaus!”

God, he really hates his name now. But at least it’s Ben’s voice that slowly brings him back to senses.

“Stay with me, bro.”

“On which side? Huh,” Klaus squeezes the armrests.

His palms are cold, fingers turning blue, because his wrists are pinched way too tightly; the back of his right hand is a crimson and black mess, knuckles skinned from fighting back. Klaus focuses his glance on a plaid duvet on the bed not to participate in a horror show that’s about to continue.

But the phantoms never ask him what he wants.  

The dead babushka limps around, grumbling non-stop, all of these “зачем они это сделали, бессовестные,”* and that she didn’t want to die, she still wants to be alive. He’s seen her earlier today, but she wasn’t that hyperactive; Klaus’ sobriety gives her more energy. This is not the best way to start learning Russian, but Klaus absorbs her sorrows, she’s the loudest guest at this rave.

“Talk to her,” Ben whispers.

“It’s driving me crazy.”

Klaus stares at bloody spots on the towel. His knees are scraped and bruised, red trails dried on his shins; he stomps his foot on the carpet in despair, this brings nothing but pain striking up his ankle.

“She’s waiting, come on, talk to her, Klaus.”

He can barely control the trembling of his body, he clenches his teeth and breathes out through his nose even though this won’t ease his withdrawal.

She didn’t want to die, she didn’t want to die, _she didn’t —_

“That bitch won’t shut up!”

“Watch your mouth!” Hazel’s voice comes from another room.

Klaus roars, thrashing in his chair and lashing out on the brink of breaking his bones; anger erodes him like acid, he shouldn’t be there, he doesn’t know anything.

“Stop it, stop it!”

Klaus’ screams are intertwined with the old woman’s cries, he’s utterly possessed as he screws his eyes shut. This doesn’t protect him, he swallows his bailing way too late — a leather belt makes a whooshing noise next to his ear, a massive metal buckle cripples the skin on his shoulder. Then there’s a hand pulling his hair and yanking his head up.

He smiles when Cha-Cha glares at him upside down.

“Didn’t know you were _this_ kinky, babe,” he breathes out.

He’s got a right to joke with her like that, because come on — she’s his _old friend_ now, a friend who waterboarded him and who snuffed out a cigarette from his own pack against his arm. It didn’t satisfy her.

Klaus bites his inner cheeks to shreds when Cha-Cha gets too involved into the execution, and he doubles over to muffle his curses against the towel as the blows keep coming harder like hailstone. The most terrifying thing about this is that despite the amount of siblings he’s gonna die _alone_ and in vain in this motel room with Ben, that dead babushka and couple other corpses judging him.

“Where’s Five? We left him a message,” Cha-Cha says.

“I told you already, he’s not coming. No one will.”

Klaus’ lips are wobbling, speech slurred, his spine and his shoulder blades feel like bare nerve endings when he leans against the back of the chair. Cha-Cha only puffs her bangs off her forehead when Klaus is about to headbutt her, but Hazel’s here to punish him for his disobedience; his fists are too heavy, and Klaus can’t fully get his vision back. It’s like a free fall or a rollercoaster with his ears clogged, stuffed with caked blood. He’d throw up if he had anything left in his churning stomach.

“Stay awake!” Ben waves his arms. “Don’t let him get you.”

Old Russian lady keeps mumbling monotonously. And Klaus gives up.

“Hi?” he looks over his shoulder.

She stops muttering her standard phrases, goggling at him. There’s a gaping hole in her skull, face splattered red, with leftover brain peeking out of the gunshot wound. She’s not gonna move an inch away now, Klaus is sure; so he can as well do the thing that makes him unique. Or insane.

He’s sweating, anticipating a tough conversation.

“What’s your name?”

“Zoya Popova,” she grumbles, slightly surprised. As if he should’ve known that from the very beginning.

“Oh. That’s a lovely name,” Klaus nods. Then he turns to Hazel and Cha-Cha who have already labeled him a freak. “Zoya Popova,” he repeats. “Short, with a limp. She’s so pissed at you guys,” he chuckles. “You’re not gonna believe.”

Zoya totters towards the sink in the corner of the room.

“How the fuck —” Cha-Cha gets up from the table. “Hazel!”

Hazel sighs and slaps Klaus across the face lazily. Well, Klaus is not the only one who’s done with this shit.

 

***

The ghosts occupy the motel room like his fever dreams, worse than all of the bad trips he’s ever had. All of them are mangled, with their necks twisted and with their fingers chopped off, bleeding, stinking of death and misery. _Forward, reverse._ This is what the middle-aged man remembers, that there was the car that ran him over _forward, reverse;_ Hazel didn’t kill his wife, the man is so grateful. But he’s holding his snake-like bowels in his hands now.

Swiss Alps. A ski trip.

This is like a therapy group for spirits, they’re forming a circle around Klaus and laying their grudges on his shoulders. They’re gibbering in foreign languages while demonstrating different kinds of injuries, wasting Klaus’ time, and he responds, he communicates with them until sees fear running across the agents’ faces as they observe him wordlessly. The woman with the pillow clutched to her chest screams at Klaus, and he just nods, just _yeah I know that they smothered you._

They disappear when they have nothing else to say, the seance is over.

But Klaus’ kidnappers have gotten even madder now.

“Shut him up, he’s talking nonsense,” Hazel fidgets on the bed. “We’re not gonna get anything from him. Just turn off this radio.”

Cha-Cha still holds a belt in her hand.

Klaus shrinks into himself — she might’ve slit his throat fourteen times already. But Cha-Cha just closes the blinds and seals his mouth shut; it hurts, his saliva tastes like bile and sweat, and he can’t even sit up straight since his back is all littered with grazes and hematomas now. He can’t breathe properly, his nose is full of clotted blood. Klaus is getting chills, not identifying whether the voices he hears belong to the living ones or not. Hazel and Cha-Cha lock themselves in the bathroom again, as if it’s their working office.

Klaus groans against the gag.

“You can get out,” Ben says. “Think about it, Klaus, you can _still_ get out.”

His legs ache when he drags the chair to the small round table next to the window; panic hits him like a whiplash, forcing him to bang his head against the table. Then again. Then again until he thinks he can’t anymore; he’s a second away from starting to sob like a lost kid. For a brief moment, there’s the hope that his siblings are going to finally notice he’s gone. There’s the hope that Luther will break through the wall any second, leaving an ape-shaped hole in it, that Diego will pin the agents to the floor with his daggers, that Allison will rumor them, because they certainly got the wrong guy. Or that Five — the only one Hargreeves they need — will teleport here and solve all of their problems.

But there’s no one on the balcony.

Klaus pounds his head against the table like a hammer, the gash in his eyebrow begins to bleed again, red spills all over the surface.

“This is not what I meant,” Ben sighs. “Smash the glass of water and use it as a knife.”

 _Damn,_ this was so obvious. Klaus’ head thuds against the table once again, but this time he doesn’t lift it up, aware of the noises coming from the bathroom. Hazel and Cha-Cha are probably elaborating new torture methods, and Klaus doesn’t want to be their punching bag anymore. His cheek is pressed against the cool glass, and he jerks his head, pushing it off the table. Despite making the worst decisions of his life, Klaus has always been a lucky bastard; the glass misses the carpet, hitting the floor straight away. But also Klaus’ luck has always been a bitch, because he can’t reach for a piece of his salvation now.

“Use your foot.”

That’s gonna hurt.

Klaus listens to Ben’s advice and rocks in his chair, nearly crashing down as his foot slides to the diamonds of glass on the floor. It’s pretty far away, and his immobilized forearms are overstrained, he’s about to lose his towel as his toe touches the biggest shatter. It’s almost as cool as ice; Klaus manages to catch it, crying against the tape as a sharp edge pierces his foot. He leaves a bloody trace down the carpet as he sits back up in the chair and repositions the _splinter_ from his foot into his left hand. It’s time to say goodbye to the fetters.

“Move, move, you’ve got time,” Ben hurries him up.

Klaus pokes at the tape on his wrist clumsily, missing it a few times and accidentally slicing his skin.

“Don’t hit the vein.”

Klaus moans out a _shut up,_ but it’s way too indistinct. The tape gets ruptured with a pop, his numb arm is free now, and he can get rid of the rest of the restrains — so good that the agents didn’t tie his feet as well. He removes the seal off his mouth, greedily taking gulps of air. He’s frantically looking for the ways to escape when he hears the footsteps that might turn to his death march. The vent is the first thing that catches Klaus’ attention — there’s a black briefcase in it, and Klaus stops for a second; this is enough to almost get a bullet into his forehead. He falls to the floor, covering his head with his hands then snatching the briefcase out of the vent.

The barrel of Cha-Cha’s gun is pointed at him like her third eye.

“Can I borrow this?” Klaus blurts out.

A gunshot says its no.

Klaus raises his free hand up and looks at the door.

“Nevermind.”

Hazel holds a gun as well.

Klaus makes a false move as if he’s about to dive into the vent, and Cha-Cha shoots in this direction, losing her tracking so he can jump to the balcony. He’s only turning around to cover his side with a heavy briefcase. The string of bullets hits the lock on the door. It beeps and opens instantly; Hazel still doesn’t pull the trigger, just fumbling with a gun.

“Run,” Ben orders.

And so Klaus does.

He hops over the railings — thank God it’s not that high — with the briefcase pressed to his torso like a shield. Bullets keep whistling while he huddles into the gap in between the dumpster and the wall of a strip bar. The agents might shapeshift into bloodhounds and follow him by the stench of his open wounds.

“Move.”

Their paths aren’t crossing anymore. Klaus flees towards the parking lot, to the first available car and slamming the briefcase into the passenger’s door. The alarm is screeching a stray cat style; Klaus shoves his hand into the jagged crack to open the door and climb inside. It’s gonna be a miracle if he’s not getting any infection while walking around beaten senseless.

Ben points at the tuft of wires, and says,

“One of these might turn the alarm off.”

Klaus tears out all of them. The car shuts up.

Surprisingly, he can still start the engine.  

He’s a terrible driver, he’s dizzy, and there’s the scab around his right ear. The rows of street lamps create a maze full of illusions or maybe it’s just his concussion. Klaus is not even getting chased by the police as he drives a stolen car; no one in this _friendly_ neighborhood cares about the guy with a smudged eyeliner, with only a bloodied towel wrapped around his waist. And _oh,_ with his deceased brother in the passenger seat. They’re speeding up towards the mansion as Klaus starts to laugh hysterically, nearly taking his hands off the steering wheel. His shoulders and his chest are on fire, and he’s definitely gonna be identified by the blood and fingerprints he leaves all over the car. Being homeless from time to time had amped up his stamina, and now he’s using all of his inner reserves to make it through.

When the lights of the city begin to blink in the horizon, Ben utters,

“It’s time to take a walk.”

“What?” Klaus sounds oblivious, even for himself.  

“Get out of the car, it’s not safe anymore.”     

Klaus grabs the briefcase from the backseat and throws the door open.

“As if it’s ever been.”

 

***

Klaus leaves bloody footprints all over the floor as he trudges down the hallway, lugging the briefcase all the way to the bathroom. He drops it in the corner before turning the water on and plunging into it, eager to get pristine inside and out. He rests his head on the side of the tub and closes his eyes not to see bubbles turn to red from all of the blood leaking out of his stinging scrapes.

“We’re screwed up,” he whispers. “So, so badly.”

This sounds funny enough to giggle, but he’s got no weed to turn the situation to a joke; he’d listen to music, but his headphones are broken beyond repair along with his Walkman, all piled next to his bed now. He needs a cigarette or a dose of good old meth to forget about his crazy journey, but his only trophy is that enigmatic briefcase.

Ben stops Klaus when he leaves the bathroom.

“We’re not gonna check what’s inside, are we?”

“We’re gonna pawn this shit,” Klaus walks right through Ben. It feels cold, almost comforting.

Klaus crawls on his tiptoes like a thief or like a rebellious teenager. If his siblings meet him right now, when he’s covered from the waist down with a _fresh_ towel, they’re probably gonna think that he’s just finished taking a bath and missed everything. This thought makes him chuckle again; he dresses up as soon as he enters his room. Just in case. He deserves a medal for dealing with this shit, definitely, and just staying alive is not a decent prize. Klaus sits down on his bed and puts the briefcase on his lap; Ben is not as curious as Klaus is.

“Don’t touch it.”

Klaus waves him away.

“Please, be money,” he prays, pressing his forehead to the side of the briefcase. “Or treasures.”

Ben is about to add something else, but it’s irrelevant.

Klaus opens Pandora’s box.

**Author's Note:**

> no motel shoes, sorry.  
> \---  
> klaus could’ve used [that damn glass](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dzh1H24X4AA8loQ.jpg) (on the table) for maaany things, right? and i believe that hazel could be the one to help him out just a little. also i needed explanations of what. happened. to klaus’ damn back.  
> \---  
> *she said something like “why did you do that, you have no conscience.” idek if there’s a better translation posted somewhere tho


End file.
